Diagnosis of Articular Cartilage Damage by Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography and the Extracted Optical Properties

This paper presents a diagnosis method for articular cartilage damage using polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT). Through signal analysis, the optical characteristics of intact cartilage and different types of mild lesions within cartilages can be quantified from measures such as the scattering coefficient (μs), effective anisotropy factor (geff ), and birefringence coefficient (Δn). Our preliminary investigation using porcine articular cartilage indicated that both subsurface morphological changes and apparent variations in optical properties, which may be the early signs of cartilage degeneration, were found in three types of diseased cartilages.